The House Republican health-care plan picked up an important endorsement on Friday from leaders of a bloc of conservative lawmakers, after President Donald Trump agreed to back more stringent curbs on Medicaid funding and proposals to add work requirements for its beneficiaries.

“100% of the nos are yeses,” Mr. Trump said of the group of 13 lawmakers he hosted in the Oval Office Friday morning, who included leaders of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The president said that overnight his administration had worked to convince many of the people in the room to back the bill and that he was confident he had their support now. “Every single person sitting in this room is now a yes.”

Leaders of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus that includes most of the House GOP lawmakers, repeated their willingness to back the bill as they left the White House, citing Mr. Trump’s backing for block grants and support for states adding requirements that beneficiaries show they are working or attempting to do so.

It wasn’t clear how many rank-and-file members of the Republican Study Committee were on board and if the bill has the support of enough Republicans to pass the House, which is expected to vote on it Thursday. A smaller group of conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus, could yet torpedo the legislation if all members withhold their support.

“President Trump himself committed that he is all in, 100% in, for this bill,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R., La.), who is in charge of rounding up lawmakers’ votes and a past leader in the committee.

Rep. Mark Walker (R., N.C.), the current chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said that lawmakers had held a conference call close to midnight to discuss the bill. He said that with commitments from the president to back block grants and work requirements in Medicaid, they were able to move “from undecided, or no, to a positive yes this morning.”

Several of the group’s members said after they left the White House that they entered undecided, but that Mr. Trump won them over by agreeing to two changes. One would let states impose a work requirement on Medicaid recipients. The second would allow states to choose between receiving their federal Medicaid funding in the form of a block grant or as a per capita allotment.

“Those are significant steps forward from my conservative perspective that make the bill much more agreeable,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), who now plans to vote for the bill.

Mr. Trump said he supported the calls from House conservatives to restrict federal funding for Medicaid by giving states “block grants” in exchange for more leeway in how they run the program. He said he wanted states to continue to have federal help for their neediest but also the flexibility states have requested in managing the program.

In his comments Friday, Mr. Trump praised the visiting GOP House members, saying that they had been tough negotiators. Criticizing the 2010 health law is a point around which Republicans have been able to rally; the mechanics of undoing the law have been more divisive.

“It’s on a respirator,” Mr. Trump said. “Obamacare is not an alternative.”

Some lawmakers in the meeting had already publicly pledged support for the bill, including Mr. Scalise, the House Majority Whip. Members of the whip team, in charge of counting the votes, said they were getting closer to the 216 votes the bill will need to pass the chamber. The bill still has opposition from both conservative and centrist Republicans.

“It’s still in the works, but we’re getting closer and closer,” said Rep. Dennis Ross (R., Fla.).

Mr. Trump spoke after four Republican governors announced their opposition Thursday night to the House GOP legislation, another signal of the political challenges it faces from moderates within the Republican party as well as its right-wing.

The four GOP governors come from Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and Arkansas, states that expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act. In a letter to congressional leaders, they cited the potential for the bill to strip people of Medicaid coverage.

The bill is still likely to be amended in the Senate, where a dozen Republicans have already indicated they consider the more conservative direction it is going in the House as unacceptable. Some centrist GOP senators say the legislation needs to give more generous support to rural, older and low-income people to help them buy health insurance.

Mr. Scalise said he was unruffled by that prospect Friday morning, because his responsibility was simply to get a bill out of the House.

“If they want to make additional changes, that’s called the legislative process,” said Mr. Scalise. “We’re just happy to get this bill passed through the House, that’s what we’re focused on, and the Senate can take care of their business.”

Jewish community centers and schools in at least 12 states reported getting bomb threats on Monday, the JCC Association of North America said.

It is the fifth wave of such threats this year that have stoked fears of a resurgence of anti-Semitism.

The threats, all of which appeared to be hoaxes, were received in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

For some centers, it was the second or third time this year that they had been targeted.

Jewish community centers and schools in at least 12 states reported getting bomb threats on Monday. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department K-9 officers searched the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada after an employee received a suspicious phone call

And people were evacuated because of a bomb threat at the David Posnack Jewish Community Center and David Posnack Jewish Day School in Davie, Florida

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The Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD, and the Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, VA, also received telephoned bomb threats, in addition to centers in Staten Island, Tarrytown and New Rochelle, NY. Pictured: Authorities at the Davie, Florida day school

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Other centers targeted included those in Cherry Hill, NJ; Providence, RI; Asheville, NC; Mobile, AL; Harrisburg, PA; Ann Arbor, MI; Talleyville, DE and Indianapolis, IN. Pictured: People in prayer at a Philadelphia cemetery that was vandalized

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department’s civil rights division have said they were investigating the threats alongside local law enforcement, but little information has been made public so far about any perpetrators.

The Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, and the Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, Virginia, also received telephoned bomb threats, according to a statement by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. Police later gave the all clear.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department K-9 officers searched the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada after an employee received a suspicious phone call that led about 10 people to evacuate the building in Las Vegas on February 27.

And people were evacuated because of a bomb threat at the David Posnack Jewish Community Center and David Posnack Jewish Day School in Davie, Florida.

Three locations in New York – in Staten Island and the nearby Westchester County suburbs of Tarrytown and New Rochelle – were also hit with such calls.

The Staten Island and Tarrytown calls came at 9.30am and 10am, respectively, Fox 5 reported.

Police said that about 100 headstones had been toppled at Mount Carmel Cemetary in Philadelphia. Pictured: Philly Mayor Jim Kenney, left, and David Pearl Jr lifting headstone of Pearl’s grandfather which was damaged in the vandalism

The bomb threats were the fifth wave of such threats this year that have stoked fears of a resurgence of anti-Semitism. Jewish groups, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli officials have all condemned the surge in disruptive intimidation and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department’s civil rights division have said they were investigating the threats alongside local law enforcement, but little information has been made public so far about any perpetrators

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a satement: ‘These reprehensible and cowardly attacks are not limited to the Jewish community.

‘They are assaults on all New Yorkers and I vow that we will do everything in our power to catch those responsible for this wave of hate crimes.’

Jewish groups, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli officials have all condemned the surge in disruptive intimidation, as well as the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries.

‘Members of our community must see swift and concerted action from federal officials to identify and capture the perpetrator or perpetrators who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in our communities,’ David Posner, a director at the JCC Association, said in a statement.

Police said on Sunday that about 100 headstones had been toppled at Mount Carmel Cemetary in Philadelphia, about a week after a similar act of vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called the damage reported in Philadelphia ‘shocking and a source of worry.’

He referenced other attacks in the area recently, and added: ‘Evil and hatred must be stopped. Now.’

White House spokesman Sean Spicer raised the subject of the vandalism at a news briefing on Monday.

‘The president continues to condemn these and any other forms of anti-Semitic and hateful acts in the strongest terms,’ he told reporters, saying they were in breach of the country’s founding principles.

Some Jewish groups see the vandalism and threats as a sign that anti-Semitic groups have been emboldened by Trump’s election.

His campaign last year drew the support of white supremacists and other right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

Trump has said he is the ‘least anti-Semitic person’ in the world, and noted that one of his daughters, his son-in-law and some of his grandchildren are Jewish.

JERRY HOLT, STAR TRIBUNESt. Paul Police officers stood out front of The St. Paul Jewish Community Center after it was evacuated after receiving a bomb threat Monday February 20, 2017 in St.Paul, MN.

The St. Paul Jewish Community Center was evacuated after receiving a bomb threat Monday morning — one of 11 incidents nationwide and the second such scare in the Twin Cities in as many months.

The center reopened within about 90 minutes, and St. Paul police said no bombs or other “dangerous devices” were discovered.

Nearly 200 children, caregivers and adult members were hustled out of the building on St. Paul Avenue and moved to a nearby fire station while the site was searched, police said.

Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), said in a statement that the threat was received by phone and that “leadership at the St. Paul JCC showed tremendous poise in responding.”

The threat was one of 11 made at Jewish Community Centers across the country, all of which turned out to be hoaxes, according to a statement by the organization’s parent group.

“While we are relieved … that not a single person was harmed, we are concerned about the anti-Semitism behind these threats, and the repetition of threats intended to interfere with day-to-day life,” said the statement by David Posner of the JCC Association of North America. JCC members “will not be cowed by threats,” Posner said.

Later Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice said its Civil Rights Division and the FBI would investigate the national series of incidents for potential violations of federal law.

The St. Paul JCC, which has hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish members, has an athletic complex with youth sports programming, swimming lessons and basketball leagues, as well as a library, an early childhood center and classrooms used for lectures and community events.

Monday’s incident comes one month after a phoned-in bomb threat closed the Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park. That threat was one of many in at least 17 states that day targeting Jewish institutions.

Jeff Van Nest, a spokesman for the FBI’s field office in Minneapolis, said the agency was coordinating with local law enforcement much as it did after the St. Louis Park bomb threat. Van Nest declined to comment on the Sabes investigation, noting that it is an ongoing matter, but did say agents are working to identify the source of the threat. “All of the resources of the FBI are available in a case like this,” Van Nest said. “Any time there’s a bomb threat, even if it’s a hoax, is a violation of federal law.”

In a joint statement, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Council Member Chris Tolbert, who represents the ward where the JCC is located, called the incident “something we all fear,” but added that it demonstrated the strength of the community and lauded the police and firefighters who quickly responded.

“These actions have no place in St. Paul, and they have no place in our country,” the statement said. “Our nation is feeling the weight of division, but … we will stand in solidarity with the Jewish community against any who try to sow the seeds of hate in our midst.”

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Four states that border on Mexico are included in the proposal — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four — Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the AP report was “100 percent not sure” and “irresponsible.” ”There is no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants,” he said.

Governors in the 11 states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The memo is addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It would serve as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo says participating troops would be authorized “to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States.” It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any unauthorized immigrants.

Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.

The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as Friday, staffers in several different offices reported discussions were underway.

If implemented, the impact could be significant. Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. without authorization live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 Census data.

Use of National Guard troops would greatly increase the number of immigrants targeted in one of Trump’s executive orders last month, which expanded the definition of who could be considered a criminal and therefore a potential target for deportation. That order also allows immigration agents to prioritize removing anyone who has “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”

Under current rules, even if the proposal is implemented, there would not be immediate mass deportations. Those with existing deportation orders could be sent back to their countries of origin without additional court proceedings. But deportation orders generally would be needed for most other unauthorized immigrants.

The troops would not be nationalized, remaining under state control.

Spokespeople for the governors of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon and New Mexico said they were unaware of the proposal, and either declined to comment or said it was premature to discuss whether they would participate. The other three states did not immediately respond to the AP.

The proposal would extend the federal-local partnership program that President Barack Obama’s administration began scaling back in 2012 to address complaints that it promoted racial profiling.

The 287(g) program, which Trump included in his immigration executive order, gives local police, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers the authority to assist in the detection of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as a regular part of their law enforcement duties on the streets and in jails.

The draft memo also mentions other items included in Trump’s executive order, including the hiring of an additional 5,000 border agents, which needs financing from Congress, and his campaign promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The signed order contained no mention of the possible use of state National Guard troops.

According to the draft memo, the militarization effort would be proactive, specifically empowering Guard troops to solely carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the program.

In addition to responding to natural or man-made disasters or for military protection of the population or critical infrastructure, state Guard forces have been used to assist with immigration-related tasks on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the construction of fences.

In the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush twice deployed Guard troops on the border to focus on non-law enforcement duties to help augment the Border Patrol as it bolstered its ranks. And in 2010, then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced a border security plan that included Guard reconnaissance, aerial patrolling and military exercises.

In July 2014, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered 1,000 National Guard troops to the border when the surge of migrant children fleeing violence in Central America overwhelmed U.S. officials responsible for their care. The Guard troops’ stated role on the border at the time was to provide extra sets of eyes but not make arrests.

Bush initiated the federal 287(g) program — named for a section of a 1996 immigration law — to allow specially trained local law enforcement officials to participate in immigration enforcement on the streets and check whether people held in local jails were in the country illegally. ICE trained and certified roughly 1,600 officers to carry out those checks from 2006 to 2015.

The memo describes the program as a “highly successful force multiplier” that identified more than 402,000 “removable aliens.”

But federal watchdogs were critical of how DHS ran the program, saying it was poorly supervised and provided insufficient training to officers, including on civil rights law. Obama phased out all the arrest power agreements in 2013 to instead focus on deporting recent border crossers and immigrants in the country illegally who posed a safety or national security threat.

Trump’s immigration strategy emerges as detentions at the nation’s southern border are down significantly from levels seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, the arrest tally was the fifth-lowest since 1972. Deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally also increased under the Obama administration, though Republicans criticized Obama for setting prosecution guidelines that spared some groups from the threat of deportation, including those brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Last week, ICE officers arrested more than 680 people around the country in what Kelly said were routine, targeted operations; advocates called the actions stepped-up enforcement under Trump.

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org

(AP) – The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Four states that border on Mexico are included in the proposal — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four — Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the AP report was “100 percent not sure” and “irresponsible.” “There is no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants,” he said.

Governors in the 11 states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The memo is addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It would serve as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo says participating troops would be authorized “to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States.” It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any unauthorized immigrants.

Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.

Related Stories

The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as Friday, staffers in several different offices reported discussions were underway.

If implemented, the impact could be significant. Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. without authorization live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 Census data.

Use of National Guard troops would greatly increase the number of immigrants targeted in one of Trump’s executive orders last month, which expanded the definition of who could be considered a criminal and therefore a potential target for deportation. That order also allows immigration agents to prioritize removing anyone who has “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”

Under current rules, even if the proposal is implemented, there would not be immediate mass deportations. Those with existing deportation orders could be sent back to their countries of origin without additional court proceedings. But deportation orders generally would be needed for most other unauthorized immigrants.

The troops would not be nationalized, remaining under state control.

Spokespeople for the governors of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon and New Mexico said they were unaware of the proposal, and either declined to comment or said it was premature to discuss whether they would participate. The other three states did not immediately respond to the AP.

The proposal would extend the federal-local partnership program that President Barack Obama’s administration began scaling back in 2012 to address complaints that it promoted racial profiling.

The 287(g) program, which Trump included in his immigration executive order, gives local police, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers the authority to assist in the detection of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as a regular part of their law enforcement duties on the streets and in jails.

The draft memo also mentions other items included in Trump’s executive order, including the hiring of an additional 5,000 border agents, which needs financing from Congress, and his campaign promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The signed order contained no mention of the possible use of state National Guard troops.

According to the draft memo, the militarization effort would be proactive, specifically empowering Guard troops to solely carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the program.

In addition to responding to natural or man-made disasters or for military protection of the population or critical infrastructure, state Guard forces have been used to assist with immigration-related tasks on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the construction of fences.

In the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush twice deployed Guard troops on the border to focus on non-law enforcement duties to help augment the Border Patrol as it bolstered its ranks. And in 2010, then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced a border security plan that included Guard reconnaissance, aerial patrolling and military exercises.

In July 2014, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered 1,000 National Guard troops to the border when the surge of migrant children fleeing violence in Central America overwhelmed U.S. officials responsible for their care. The Guard troops’ stated role on the border at the time was to provide extra sets of eyes but not make arrests.

Bush initiated the federal 287(g) program — named for a section of a 1996 immigration law — to allow specially trained local law enforcement officials to participate in immigration enforcement on the streets and check whether people held in local jails were in the country illegally. ICE trained and certified roughly 1,600 officers to carry out those checks from 2006 to 2015.

The memo describes the program as a “highly successful force multiplier” that identified more than 402,000 “removable aliens.”

But federal watchdogs were critical of how DHS ran the program, saying it was poorly supervised and provided insufficient training to officers, including on civil rights law. Obama phased out all the arrest power agreements in 2013 to instead focus on deporting recent border crossers and immigrants in the country illegally who posed a safety or national security threat.

Trump’s immigration strategy emerges as detentions at the nation’s southern border are down significantly from levels seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, the arrest tally was the fifth-lowest since 1972. Deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally also increased under the Obama administration, though Republicans criticized Obama for setting prosecution guidelines that spared some groups from the threat of deportation, including those brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Last week, ICE officers arrested more than 680 people around the country in what Kelly said were routine, targeted operations; advocates called the actions stepped-up enforcement under Trump.

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton faces a striking choice in the final three weeks of the campaign: to expand her efforts to states that Democrats haven’t won in a generation, or to stay a current course that, if conditions hold, would deliver her a resounding electoral college victory.

After two tumultuous weeks focused on Donald Trump’s behavior toward women, Clinton is ahead in nearly all of the key battleground states where her campaign has directed the most resources, according to many recent polls. But some once-solidly Republican states — notably Arizona, Georgia and Utah — now also appear to be in play.

Clinton aides said they see advantages to running up the score in the electoral college, where 270 votes wins the White House. Victories in unexpected places could boost that total, handing her more of a mandate come January and decreasing the potency of Trump’s complaints of a “rigged” election.

But victories in core battleground states such as Pennsylvania and New Hampshire would almost assuredly cut off Trump’s path as well. Those states are also home to key down-ballot races that will determine control of the Senate, an important factor in how much support Clinton would have while launching an agenda in January.

“It’s true more and more states are emerging as truly competitive,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. “We are closely following the situations in those states even as we refuse to take anything for granted in the core battlegrounds, which also happen to be the sites of some of the biggest Senate races.”

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The issue is predominantly about resources. Clinton and the Democratic Party entered October with twice as much money in the bank as Trump and the Republicans, but some in Clinton’s camp have cautioned against any late moves that could jeopardize a victory in states she appears to have nailed down.

“We’ve got to get our win,” said a senior Clinton aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the campaign’s strategy. “We have to make sure we focus on keeping the pressure on and doing the things we need to build up as many electoral votes as we can.”

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The campaign is expected to decide in the coming days whether to make a more aggressive play for states such as Georgia, which is being eyed as one of the more promising opportunities for Clinton, and Arizona, where a couple of high-profile surrogates are being deployed this week: Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) on Tuesday and Chelsea Clinton on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is not willing to concede publicly that any states on the map are lost, maintaining that Clinton’s low favorability ratings and Trump’s anti-establishment message will push undecided voters and independents to break for Trump in the final leg of the campaign.

“We’re seeing a much more competitive contest than you’re analyzing them to be. We’re still playing a very active role in these states and obviously making as big of a play as possible,” said Trump spokesman Jason Miller. “There isn’t anything that’s not a priority. We don’t want to isolate it and say, everything comes down to these states.”

Conway said there may be a need to reallocate resources in the remaining weeks, but she noted that it’s “a little premature” to announce when or where that might happen.

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“There’s no shame in saying we’re going to reallocate our resources, dollars, personnel, data operation, ground game, candidate time, both [Indiana Gov. Mike] Pence’s and Trump’s time, in places where we’re more competitive,” she said.

The shifting poll numbers come amid the nastiest stretch of this year’s campaign, in which a videotape emerged showing Trump bragging in lewd terms about forcing himself on women sexually. Following the video’s publication in The Washington Post on Oct. 7, multiple women have accused Trump of kissing or groping them without their consent.

[The growing list of women who have stepped forward to accuse Trump of touching them inappropriately]

Both Trump and his running mate, Pence, have hinted that they recognize the shift. Trump has stepped up his disparagement of a “rigged” election at campaign stops across the country and on social media, urging his supporters to monitor polling places closely on Nov. 8.On Sunday, Trump noted on Twitter that there are national polls showing him within striking distance of Clinton despite the intense media focus on the accusations against him.

“Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!” Trump tweeted.

Pence sought to play down Trump’s rhetoric, saying, “We will absolutely accept the result of the election,” during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But he also appeared to embrace, at least partly, the notion of a “rigged” election.

“The American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media,”Pence said. “That’s where the sense of a rigged election goes here.”

Even as some polls have shown Clinton with only a modest lead nationally — one published Sunday by The Washington Post had her up four points over Trump — her advantage on the electoral map appears sizable.

One such tally, maintained by The Post’s blog The Fix, projects that Clinton would win 341 electoral votes to Trump’s 197 if the election were held today.

Several states that Trump initially sought to contest, including Colorado and Virginia, have now seemingly slipped out of reach. Clinton was up by 15 points in Virginia, according to a poll released Sunday by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. And Trump has pulled resources from Virginia.

Trump’s failure to perform in such states, Clinton aides said, will allow her campaign to shift attention even more to North Carolina and Florida — two must-win states for Trump — to choke his path to 270 electoral votes.

Clinton is running television ads tailored to seven states: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and Iowa. Because they cost millions of dollars to sustain, such ad purchases are the clearest clue about which states are a campaign’s top priority.

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With “smart” technology, cities will be able to address infrastructure challenges, food and water shortages, and constrained budgets.

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The vast majority of Clinton’s campaign appearances and those of her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, have been concentrated in those states, and most of the high-profile surrogates dispatched by the campaign have focused their efforts there as well.

Trump’s campaign now appears intent on remaining competitive in four battleground states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

He has maintained a far busier travel schedule than Clinton, hitting all four of those states last week, as well as New Hampshire and Maine. Trump appeared in Florida on three consecutive days last week, underscoring how crucial the state is to his strategy.

Trump will spend the early part of this week in Wisconsin and Colorado before heading to Nevada for Wednesday’s debate. His campaign operations in key battlegrounds continue to suffer from ongoing tensions with both state and national GOP establishments and a dearth of on-the-ground investments.

Last week, the campaign fired Trump’s state co-chairman in Virginia, Corey Stewart, after he took part in a protest against the Republican National Committee.

In Ohio, where Trump has fallen behind in the polls, the campaign severed ties with Matt Borges, the chairman of the state Republican Party. In a scathing letter, Trump’s Ohio state director, Robert Paduchik, accused Borges of going on a “self-promotional media tour with state and national outlets to criticize our party’s nominee.”

While the Clinton campaign has begun exploring new opportunities, it has also redoubled its efforts in some of its strongest states. The campaign increased investments recently in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Nevada, according to a Democrat who was familiar with the strategy but was not authorized to speak publicly.

The planned visits to Arizona this week by Sanders and Chelsea Clinton, meanwhile, mark what some Democrats see as a longer-term shift in the state’s electoral politics.

Only one Democrat — Bill Clinton — has carried Arizona since 1948. Bill Clinton lost the state in 1992 but narrowly prevailed in 1996.

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Alexis Tameron, the state’s Democratic party chairwoman, said the demographics of the state are trending in the right direction for Democrats, and the state’s voting patterns could resemble Colorado within a few cycles.

Even as it weighs whether to invest heavily in new states, the Clinton campaign is increasingly reaching out to voters in those places through local media, an effort to maintain a presence without reallocating resources to the state.

Kaine spoke to a Salt Lake City television station remotely from New York on Thursday, relaying that the Clinton campaign wants to step up its focus on the state, which Democrats have not won since 1964.

“Hopefully we’ll even have candidates or spouses or high-profile surrogates visit,” Kaine told KTVX. “We’re 3 1/2 weeks out in a state that we didn’t think was in play. Now it is.”

In Georgia, where the last Democrat to carry the state was Bill Clinton in 1992, there’s a clear sense that the contest is more meaningful than in recent cycles, said Michael Smith, communications director for the Georgia Democratic Party.

“Instead of using Georgia to mobilize people to go to North Carolina, they’re staying in our state. It’s night and day,” Smith said.

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Democrats are running coordinated campaigns in the battleground states, meaning money is being to spent to promote the entire ticket, not just Clinton.

That stands to benefit Democratic Senate candidates, including Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, Deborah Ross in North Carolina and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada — all of whom are in competitive races.

Priorities USA Action, the pro-Clinton super PAC, is considering devoting television air time to Senate races in four states: Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to a person familiar with the discussions. A decision is expected to be made by the middle of the week.

In an effort to help down-ballot candidates across the country, Clinton and her surrogates, especially President Obama, have stepped up their case against Republicans in general, seeking to steer voters away from giving congressional candidates a pass for “enabling” Trump.

“I mean, I know some of them now are walking away, but why did it take you this long?” Obama said at a campaign stop for Clinton in Cleveland on Friday.

Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is offering to pay for new information on Donald Trump, hoping that damaging audio or video on the Republican presidential candidate will be submitted to his super PAC.

Brock, founder of the left-wing Media Matters and operator of Correct the Record super PAC, recently posted the plea on Correct the Record’s website and is referring to the project as “TrumpLeaks,” NBC Newsreported.

Brock asked for video or audio of Trump that has yet to be released.

“One of the most important things for voters to evaluate in any election is the full measure of a candidate’s views, ideas, and temperament over time,” the website states. “In making a choice for president, voters must also consider how various candidates present themselves to the public and to the world. There are few things more important in that regard than access to video or audio in the form of prior television or radio interviews or more candid video from events a candidate may have attended.”

Brock’s super PAC goes on to say they can offer compensation to anyone who has new video or audio that has been obtained legally.

“TrumpLeaks is an effort to uncover unreported video or audio of Donald Trump so voters can have access to the Donald Trump who existed before running for president and before his recent affinity for teleprompters,” the website says of the project. “TrumpLeaks can provide some compensation to those who have usable, undoctored video or audio that has been legally obtained or is legally accessible.”

NBC Newsnotedthat the project is “highly unusual” and seems to “cross a new line” in modern day politics.

“This shouldn’t be close, but it’s close,” President Obama told the audience at a fundraiser this week in New York. “The presidential race, we should win. But Donald Trump got the nomination, so weird stuff happens.”

The odds favor Clinton. But the fact that she is not running away with the election in the final weeks should worry Democrats. At the very least it should inspire them, and Republican opponents of Trump, to ask why she is underperforming. Here are some theories.

Hillary Is a Terrible Candidate

Clinton’s problems are legion. Ask yourself what her message is. Stronger together? Please. That’s not a reason to elect her president. It’s not even true. Sometimes we’re better off alone.

She’s unpopular and distrusted. Until recent days she has benefited from being less disliked than Trump. That is changing, however. The bump in favorability she experienced after her successful convention is eroding.

Her medical episode on 9/11 makes things worse. The trouble is not that she’s ill. It’s that she’s a liar. The muddled stories of what happened at Ground Zero—allergies, dehydration, pneumonia—combined with the visual evidence reinforce the Clinton stigma of opacity and deception. Another coughing fit or stumble won’t just call into question her physical condition but will remind the public that it desperately wishes it had another choice for president.

The demographics that Democrats believe guarantee victory are not saving Clinton. NBC News reports that “Clinton is underperforming among key parts of the Obama coalition: Latinos and young voters.” NBC points to Nevada where Clinton’s lead among Hispanics is shallower than Obama’s four years ago. This lack of enthusiasm opens a space for Trump supporters, leading to close races in Nevada, Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. Obama inspired a country. Clinton inspires revulsion.

Trump Is Getting His Act Together

One of the most extraordinary developments of the campaign has been Trump’s recent performance. Since replacing his campaign team in mid-August, a candidate known for making unforced errors has committed hardly any. He’s taken on the semblance of the presidency, visiting flood victims in Louisiana, minority communities in Michigan and Ohio, the president of Mexico.

Remarkably he has stuck to script. He has not attacked the parents of a fallen warrior, hasn’t said ethnicity prevents a judge from ruling impartially, hasn’t even insulted a woman’s appearance.

I understand that’s a low bar. What matters in politics, though, isn’t where the bar is set. It’s whether the candidate steps over it.

The law of averages says that one of these days Trump will trip up. His authentic self will be revealed, distracting the media from Clinton and sending his campaign into defense. Yet Trump has an incentive to follow the path he is on. He cannot help noticing that his numbers have improved as he has listened to Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and Roger Ailes.

This creates a positive feedback loop. Trump loves nothing more than touting polls. And Trump’s braggadocio is self-reinforcing. There is a bandwagon effect where Trump’s discussion of winning encourages more voters to help him win. It worked in the primaries. Might it work for him now?

The GOP Might Not Be In As Bad Shape As We Thought

Trump’s campaign does not extend past Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Sixth Street and the RNC headquarters in Washington. But he might not need it to.

Why? Because the two weeks since Labor Day have been good not only for Trump but also for congressional Republicans. Democrats are likely to pick up seats but not control the House. Meanwhile Senate Democrats have all but conceded Ohio. Marco Rubio is ahead in Florida. Pennsylvania is a jump ball. Republican Joe Heck has a slight lead in Nevada. Limiting Republican losses to Wisconsin, Illinois, and one or two other contests would be an incredible feat, maintain a slight GOP majority, and provide Trump the “ground game” he lacks.

The Poles of Global Politics Have Reversed

For decades, politics has been divided over the question of the size of government. Liberals expand government to alleviate inequalities. Conservatives empower markets to preserve freedom. The consensus was for a Goldilocks state: neither Leviathan in scope nor small enough to deprive citizens of entitlements.

So Bill Clinton said the era of big government was over. George W. Bush promised compassionate conservatism. Barack Obama faced resistance when he sought to put America on a “new foundation.”

In 2014 something changed. My thesis is that the child migration on our southern border and President Obama’s expansion of his executive amnesty to the relatives of minors brought here illegally—despite his repeated insistence that he lacked any such authority—reversed the poles of American politics.

No longer are our debates about government. They are about the nation. Do we have one? What are its interests? Who benefits from it?

This political pole reversal, like its magnetic counterpart, is incredibly disruptive. Both parties experienced populist insurgencies. Neither nominee invokes the Constitution or limited government. The fiercest supporters of Trump are voters who feel abandoned or harmed or scared by the demographic and socioeconomic transformation of America. “The rise of Trumpism in the past year,” writes George H. Nash in The New Criterion, “has laid bare a potentially dangerous chasm in American politics: not so much between the traditional left and right but rather (as someone has put it) between those above and those below on the socio-economic scale.”

Donald Trump has benefited from this reversal more than anyone else. He understood its implications. He seized its opportunities. His Republican opponents played by the old rules. He had no rules and he won. Clinton? She hasn’t learned the lesson. As Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown University puts it:

On each of these issues—borders, immigration, national interest, the spirit of entrepreneurship, federalism, and PC speech—Hillary Clinton responds with ‘globalization-and-identity-politics-SPEAK,’ the language that has given us a world that is now exhausted, stale, and unredeemable. It is against this sort of world that citizens are revolting.

Be cautious, however. It remains unlikely the revolt will succeed. Eight weeks is a long time. Trump screws things up.

Yet he is also picking up speed exactly when it matters. How will Clinton slow him down? The debates? Everyone expects her to do well. Expectations for Trump are so low that he may “win” just by confounding them. More advertising? She’s already spent $100 million and her lead is dissipating. Investigating the Trump Foundation? The double standard is obvious.

Liberals are showing signs of panic. They’re saying the New York Times is biased for Trump (!), calling at least half his voters racist, urging Clinton to “talk about herself,” debating poll samples, announcing a “national emergency.” They are right to be alarmed. It was only in the last week that the nation’s capital began to understand it could wake up the morning of January 21, 2017, to unified Republican government under President Donald J. Trump.

Maligning definition, to speak harmful untruths about; speak evil of; slander; defame: to malign an honorable man. See also malignant as in invasive, uncontrollable, dangerous, deadly, fatal, incurable. As in “Hillary Clinton has a malignant inability to play by the rules and tell the truth.”

Wikileaks published 20,000 leaked DNC e-mail messages, many of which proved controversial for the purportedly neutral committee.

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By Kim LaCapria

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News leaks web site Wikileaks published a massive cache of 20,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mails on 22 July 2016, just days before the start of the Democratic National Convention.

Interested parties immediately began sorting through the mountain of communications between DNC staffers and contacts such as news media personnel and lawmakers. In the first few hours after the dump occurred, several documents were flagged as particularly noteworthy, primarily because the DNC outwardly maintained they favored neither of the leading Democratic candidates (i.e., Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) and had attended to both equally.

In a 26 April 2016 e-mail written for attribution to DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the committee drafted an announcement that Sen. Bernie Sanders had dropped out of contention for the Democratic nomination (even though Sanders did not drop out of the race and remained an active candidate as of 22 July 2016):

Hi all — We are starting to plan ahead with messaging to our supporters for the end of the primary and transition to the general.

Below are a handful of emails and graphic copy for the initial few days of that change, arranged below in the order in which we’ll send them as we’ve laid out in a memo to Amy:

* Emails from DWS thanking Bernie (similar to what we did when MOM dropped out)
* Copy for unity-themed graphics
* Hillary emails from Amy (our first Hillary-focused emails)
* Hillary graphic copy
* Emails from POTUS for when he endorses

Sender: Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Subject: Friend … I want to thank Bernie Sanders for bringing them to the forefront of his campaign and putting these Democratic values we share into the spotlight. I want to thank him for his unwavering commitment to equality for all and his dedication to improving the lives of Americans everywhere. For his insistence that we can do better. Because I agree — we can do better, and we must do better, for the sake of every parent who wants their kids’ lives to be a little brighter, for every student who wants to reach higher and go further, and for every person who sees this country as a place with opportunity for all. NAME, as a presidential candidate and as a member of Congress for more than two decades, Bernie Sanders has excited the people of this country, and I know he’ll continue to, no matter what he does next. So as he ends his campaign today, add your name to mine to thank him for everything[.]

A second version from the same April 2016 chain of e-mails read:

Today, as he suspends his presidential campaign, I want to thank Bernie Sanders for his everything he has brought to this race — and I want you to join me … Thanks … now onward to November and victory! Debbie

Despite the DNC’s repeated discussion of Clinton’s presumptive win, a 6 May 2016 DNC e-mail labeled media allegations that the committee was planning on a Clinton nomination as “#bernieclickbait.” In another message, DNC operatives discussed a Politico item about Clinton that was provided to the DNC for review before publication. That e-mail included National Press Secretary and Deputy Communications Director Mark Paustenbach, whose fingerprints appeared on more than a few of the controversial communications.

Another message involved what appeared to be a competing “narrative” regarding a controversial claim over chairs supposedly thrown by Sanders supporters at a Nevada caucus that was debunked on 19 May 2016. On 21 May 2016, Paustenbach pitched an idea to fellow DNC member Luis Miranda for a planted story maligning the Sanders campaign:

Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess.

Specifically, DWS had to call Bernie directly in order to get the campaign to do things because they’d either ignored or forgotten to something critical.

She had to call Bernie after the data breach to make his staff to respond to our concerns. Even then they didn’t get back to us, which is why we had to shut off their access in order to get them to finally let us know exactly how they snooped around HFA’s data.

Same was true with the standing committee appointments. They never got back to us with their names (HFA and even O’Malley got there’s in six weeks earlier) for the committees. So, again, the chair had to call Bernie personally for his staff to finally get us critical information. So, they gave us an awful list just a few days before we had to make the announcements.

It’s not a DNC conspiracy, it’s because they never had their act together.

Miranda responded by saying that:

True, but the Chair has been advised to not engage.

So we’ll have to leave it alone.

Miranda and Paustenbach were also copied in on a particularly troublesome 5 May 2016 message during which staffer Brad Marshall appeared to suggest finding a reporter to highlight Sanders’ Jewish heritage and question his faith:

It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.

Staffer Amy K. Dacey responded to that message with: “AMEN.”

A 19 May 2016 e-mail raised questions about the proper handling of funds by the DNC and the Clinton campaign, in which one staffer appeared to admonish another staffer for leaving a paper record of potentially prohibited funds transfers. In another message sent ahead of the Rhode Island primary, staffers discussed “getting out ahead” of anticipated outcry over insufficient polling places to support presumptive Sanders voters (he led by four points in that state) even though the state’s governor was “one of ours.”

On 11 May 2016, Miranda told a Wall Street Journal reporter that the inclusion of Sanders’ delegates in standing committees was a courtesy performed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In a follow-up message, Miranda affirmatively employed the “no fingerprints” strategy of press engagement, nudging and winking about their information exchange having been made in “in good faith”:

A searchable archive of the leaked messages is availake at the link. hosted here.

Kim LaCapria is a New York-based content manager and longtime snopes.com message board participant. Although she was investigated and found to be “probably false” by snopes.com in early 2002, Kim later began writing for the site due to an executive order unilaterally passed by President Obama during a secret, late-night session (without the approval of Congress). Click like and share if you think this is an egregious example of legislative overreach.

Top officials at the Democratic National Committee criticized and mocked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the primary campaign, even though the organization publicly insisted that it was neutral in the race, according to committee emails made public on Friday by WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 emails sent or received by a handful of top committee officials and provided an online tool to search through them. While WikiLeaks did not reveal the source of the leak, the committee said last month that Russian hackers had penetrated its computer system.

Among the emails released on Friday were several embarrassing messages that suggest the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials favored Hillary Clinton over Mr. Sanders — a claim the senator made repeatedly during the primaries.

Donald Trump has taken an apparent slim lead over Hillary Clinton, a new poll shows. (Steve Helber / Associated Press)

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By David Lauter
The Los Angeles Times

As the presidential race moves into a key two-week period, with the announcement of running mates and the party conventions, Donald Trump has taken an apparent slim lead over Hillary Clinton, based on strong support from white voters, particularly men.

That finding, from a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak tracking poll, a new survey that begins publication Friday, marks a significant shift in a race that most polls indicated Clinton has led since mid-May.

It comes amid a flurry of other surveys, both nationally and in battleground states, that show support for the former secretary of State declining since last week when FBI Director James B. Comey characterized her handling of classified material while in that office as “extremely careless.” Comey also said her conduct and that of her aides did not clearly violate the law or warrant prosecution.

What isn’t known is whether the new surveys are capturing Clinton at a low that will prove temporary, as voters react to Comey’s criticism and the renewed attention to her use of a private email server, or whether they reflect a more lasting shift that could hobble the presumed Democratic nominee for the remainder of the campaign.

The polls do not yet measure, for example, whether Clinton will receive a significant boost from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement on Tuesday. The next couple of weeks also could prove pivotal as voters tune in to the campaigns during the conventions.

Trump continues to face formidable obstacles to winning. Even as new surveys show the race tightening, he has not significantly increased his support: Since February, when he began to dominate the Republican primaries, his backing in head-to-head matchups with Clinton has rarely risen above 40%.

Instead, several new surveys show Clinton’s support declining, while the number of voters saying they will vote for a third-party candidate has risen.

In the new tracking poll, through Thursday night, Trump led Clinton 43% to 40%.

In the new tracking poll, through Thursday night, Trump led Clinton 43% to 40%. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of 3 points in either direction, meaning the apparent lead could be the result of chance.

By Friday morning, the poll, which will be updated every day through the election, was showing a decline in Trump’s lead.

The poll shows big gaps along the lines of race, gender, age and education that have surfaced consistently during the campaign. Through Thursday’s results, Trump led among men, 47% to 36%, while Clinton had a smaller, 41%-34% edge among women. Trump led among voters 45 and older, Clinton among those younger.

Some of Trump’s strongest support comes from white voters who have not graduated from college, among whom he led 53% to 24%. Clinton, by contrast, dominates among minorities, leading 77% to 3% among blacks and 51% to 30% among Latinos.

Clinton also held a narrow edge among white college graduates, 42% to 40%. If she wins that group, Clinton would be the first Democrat to carry white college graduates since polls began asking such demographic questions in the early 1950s.

The poll also offers some support for a prediction that Trump’s backers have made – that he would appeal to disaffected voters who did not cast ballots in 2012. Those who did not vote that year or voted for a minor-party candidate were more likely to favor Trump than Clinton, the poll indicated.

Although respondents to the poll narrowly favor Trump, they don’t necessarily expect him to win. In a separate question asking people who they think will prevail, Clinton led 53% to 41%.

Research has shown that that question often – although not always – forecasts election results more accurately than asking people their voting intention, particularly months before the vote is counted.

The Daybreak tracking poll differs from traditional polls in two major respects. Rather than questioning a different group of respondents for each poll, the survey relies on a panel, currently consisting of about 3,000 people recruited at random to represent U.S. households.

The panel is part of a larger Understanding America Study conducted by USC’s Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. The election survey is being done in partnership with The Times and USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

Because of the panel design, “we have the same people every time, so changes in the poll are really people changing their minds,” rather than the result of variations in who answers a particular survey, said Arie Kapteyn, the director of the USC Dornsife center, who pioneered the approach for the 2012 election while at Rand Corp.

The panel design typically shows less volatility than traditional polls. Four years ago, it proved more accurate than most other surveys in forecasting the election result, although “maybe that was beginner’s luck,” Kapteyn said.

The other major difference is that the poll, using a 1-to-100 scale, asks respondents to say what the chance is that they will vote as well as the chance that they will cast a ballot for Clinton, for Trump or for another candidate. The results are weighted based on those probabilities, so that a voter who is 100% sure of his or her choice has more impact on the forecast than one who is 60% sure.

That approach is one way to resolve “one of the biggest problems that polls have – deciding who is going to vote,” Kapteyn said.

Most polls use several questions to try to determine who is a likely voter and make a forecast based on that, but efforts to predict likely voting are often wrong, particularly far in advance of the election. Employing probabilities means “you get to use all the data,” Kapteyn said. In theory, that should lead to more reliable results.

Several other polls released in the last couple of days point to the damage that the email issue has caused Clinton.

A New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday morning, for example, showed that voters by a wide margin said Clinton would be better than Trump at handling several major issues.

But 67% of voters in the survey said Clinton was not trustworthy, an increase of 5 points from a CBS survey taken last month. The two candidates were tied in the new New York Times/CBS poll, with each receiving 40% of the vote.

A national poll by Marist College for McClatchy newspapers also showed a significant drop in support for Clinton. That July 13 survey showed Clinton leading Trump, 42% to 39%, but in April, a similar Marist poll had found Clinton with a 9-point lead.

Clinton’s support has dropped 8 points since then. Trump dropped 2 points, and 13% now say they would not vote for either of the two, the poll found.

A 50-state compilation released Thursday by Morning Consult, a media and polling firm that conducts surveys online, found Clinton still leading in enough states to win the presidency, with 320 electoral votes for her, 212 for Trump, and Iowa’s six electoral votes a dead heat.

In addition to Iowa, there were eight states where Clinton and Trump were within 2 points of each other, according to the firm’s surveys, which were based on responses from 57,000 voters in all 50 states. Those were Ohio, where the firm found Trump narrowly ahead; and Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which leaned slightly to Clinton.

Compared with a previous round of surveys in April, Clinton had lost significant ground in Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Ohio. She had gained, however, in Georgia and Nevada, both states with large minority populations. Nevada is now firmly on the Democratic side, the Morning Consult surveys showed.

New polling from Fox News showed Clinton leading in two other states where minority voters are likely to hold the key – Virginia and Colorado.

Additional evidence of greater risk for Clinton in battleground states came from three other surveys released Wednesday.

Wisconsin’s closely followed Marquette Law School poll showed Clinton with a 4-point lead, 45% to 41% among voters likely to cast ballots in that state in November. That was down from a 9-point margin, 46% to 37%, among likely voters in the same survey last month.

Polls in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa by Marist for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found Clinton ahead in Iowa and Pennsylvania and tied with Trump in Ohio. In all three states, however, Clinton had lost ground since previous Marist polls.

Polling by Quinnipiac University of voters in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio similarly showed Clinton losing support. Their surveys found Trump narrowly ahead in Pennsylvania and Florida and a tie in Ohio.

The Quinnipiac polls have generally shown Clinton doing somewhat worse than other surveys, so what’s most significant is the downward trend for her, which matches that found by Marist and Marquette.

Union leaders mobilize to try to counteract the Republican’s appeal to the white working class

Donald Trump speaks during a rally May 5 in West Virginia.PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

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By MELANIE TROTTMAN and BRODY MULLINS
The Wall Street Journal

June 1, 2016 8:04 p.m. ET

Labor leaders are nervous about Donald Trump’s appeal to unions’ many white, working-class members, and they are working to head off partisan defections.

Unions spend heavily to support Democrats in elections and wield great influence over whether their members support those candidates. But labor leaders fear many of their members could be drawn to Mr. Trump. Merged Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling data from the first four months of the year show that among white union households, support is split evenly between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, at 44% each, in a potential general-election matchup.

“Everybody recognizes the enormous threat Trump poses” whether their unions have backed either Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders or Mrs. Clinton, said Robert Master, the Eastern region political director for the Communications Workers of America, which has endorsed Mr. Sanders. “There’s an element in that right-wing populism that is appealing to some of our members, there’s no question about that,” Mr. Master said.

The AFL-CIO is preparing an education campaign to highlight some of Mr. Trump’s statements—such as that wages are too high—and lesser-known things about how he has run his businesses and treated employees, said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the nation’s largest federation of labor unions.

Last week, the AFL-CIO began its on-the-ground program in battleground states including Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada. It is distributing fliers at members’ workplaces and homes and is making them available to its affiliate unions and local chapters in every state.

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Part of the campaign is rooted in a round of focus groups the AFL-CIO conducted in recent weeks in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati—both cities in states where the percentage of workers in unions outstrips the national rate of 11.1%. The groups consisted of union members who weren’t strongly for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton but were considering voting for the Republican. Most participants were registered as independents.

When the participants learned things about Mr. Trump, such as his support for so-called right-to-work laws that can weaken unions, “it changed the prism that they were looking at the election through, from being this popular entertainment game show to ‘this is really going to affect my life,’ ” Mr. Podhorzer said.
The group’s fliers also accuse the Republican of hypocrisy for producing products overseas even while he vows to protect American jobs.

Mr. Trump has more recently voiced support for raising the minimum wage, and Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager, said Mrs. Clinton and her labor supporters are out of step with working-class voters. Mrs. Clinton “is 100% owned by Wall Street special interests, meaning she won’t do anything to help union workers,” Mr. Lewandowski said.

In many ways, unions’ membership rolls represent the sweet spot of Mr. Trump’s coalition. Last year, about three-fourths of the nation’s 14.8 million union members were white, and more than half of those were men, according to the Labor Department. The white members earned a median wage of $1,007 a week for full-time work, the equivalent of $52,364 a year, putting them near the annual average wage of $48,320 for U.S. workers in May of last year, Labor Department data show.

According to the AFL-CIO, 39% of white workers who belong to its dozens of member unions have some sort of post-high school degree, which means the majority share a common trait of many Trump supporters—no college education.

More than half of the collective membership in AFL-CIO unions identify as Democrat, while about one-third identify as Republican and the rest as independent. The latter group is the one organized labor is most concerned about.

Republicans say Mr. Trump’s appeal with union voters could potentially allow him to replicate the campaign that helped elect former President Ronald Reagan.

“Trump appeals to union membership like the Teamsters and should be able to put together a modern-day Reagan Democrat coalition,” said Scott Reed, a Republican campaign strategist.

Union leaders say they are concerned that Mrs. Clinton’s lead in national polls over Mr. Trump has been narrowing, but they note that she hasn’t had a chance to consolidate Democrats. While she has won the vast majority of union endorsements, Mr. Sanders has ardent support from some of the more left-leaning unions, giving Mr. Trump an opening to attack her by saying “she can’t close the deal.”

“Trump has somewhat outflanked Hillary by making a case that he is the one who is for the true Democratic base,” said Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which has endorsed Mr. Sanders.

Other labor officials play down the ultimate threat of Mr. Trump.

“The union vote will be as strong as it’s ever been,” said Steve Rosenthal, a political strategist for unions. “Fear is a mighty powerful motivator.”

A possible weak spot for Mrs. Clinton in a matchup with Mr. Trump is on trade.

There is some lingering resentment among union members that she voiced support for the North American Free Trade Agreement when she was first lady, and while Mrs. Clinton has come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, she has voiced support for it in the past.

So far, the AFL-CIO and its president, Richard Trumka, have been the main forces taking jabs at Mr. Trump. The federation was running anti-Trump digital ads, sending anti-Trump texts to members and speaking out against Mr. Trump months ago.

The AFL-CIO’s community affiliate group, Working America, an organization for non-union people, has conducted what it calls “front porch focus groups” about Mr. Trump with some of its members and others. For five weeks through mid-January, canvassers visited nearly 1,700 likely voters with household incomes of $75,000 or less in white, working-class areas near Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

While many Republicans who had decided on a candidate told canvassers they were behind Mr. Trump, one in four Democrats who had decided showed a preference for him, too.

The canvassers were encouraged, however, that personality was far more important than issues among Trump supporters, with nearly half saying they liked him because he “speaks his mind,” the group said in a report.

“What we found is if we had longer conversations with them that layered on different approaches, we could move people” away from him, said Karen Nussbaum, Working America’s executive director.

Write to Melanie Trottman at melanie.trottman@wsj.com and Brody Mullins at brody.mullins@wsj.com

FRANKFURT, Germany — A group of investigative journalists on Monday published the names of thousands of offshore companies at the heart of a massive trove of data on the finances of the rich and powerful that has become known as the Panama Papers.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists made data on 200,000 entities available on its website at 1800 GMT (2 p.m. EDT) Monday.

They contain basic corporate information about companies, trusts and foundations set up in 21 jurisdictions including Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Nevada. The data was obtained from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which said it was hacked.

Users can search the data and see the networks involving the offshore companies, including, where available, Mossack Fonseca’s internal records of the true owners.

Information and documents on bank accounts, phone numbers and emails have been removed from the database.

Mossack Fonseca said last week it had sent a cease and desist letter to the ICIJ urging the organization not to publish the database, “taking into consideration that it is based on the theft of confidential information.”

The ICIJ said it was putting the information online “in the public interest” as “a careful release of basic corporate information,” not a “data dump,” as it builds on an earlier database of offshore entities.

Setting up an offshore company is not by itself illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, and Mossack Fonseca said it observed rules requiring it to identify its clients.

The ICIJ prefaced the database release by noting that the appearance of particular persons and companies on the list doesn’t imply wrongdoing.

But anti-poverty campaigners say shell companies can be used by the wealthy and powerful to shield money from taxation, or to launder the gains from bribery, embezzlement and other forms of corruption. The Group of 20 most powerful economies has agreed that individual governments should make sure authorities can tell who really owns legally registered companies, but implementation in national law has lagged.

The data cache, first leaked to Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, showed offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders. Sueddeutsche Zeitung says it was given the information by an anonymous source.

Reports based on the documents quickly led to the resignation of Iceland’s Prime Minister David Gunnlaugson after it was revealed he and his wife had set up a company in the British Virgin Islands that had holdings in Iceland’s failed banks. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for financial transparency, faced questions about shares he once held in an offshore trust set up by his father. The ICIJ reported that associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin moved some $2 billion through such companies. Putin’s spokesman dismissed the report.

The ICIJ said Monday that Mossack Fonseca had files on dozens of Americans who have faced accusations of civil or criminal financial misconduct. That was based on reporting credited to consortium partners McClatchy Newspapers, the Portland Business Journal and Fusion Investigates

Its website reported that people who had set up offshore companies included people with publicly available records of their legal troubles. One was a financier sentenced in 2002 to prison for fraud. The firm also set up a company for six Americans later sued for running a Ponzi scheme, a type of financial fraud in which new money is used to pay off earlier investors until the scheme collapses.

The report said he leaked records “suggest that Mossack Fonseca’s high-volume business model made it difficult for it to keep track of its clients’ backgrounds and activities.” The firm set up more than 100,000 offshore entities, such as trusts and shell companies, between 2005 and 2015, the report said.

“Mossack Fonseca’s working relationships with dozens of Americans tied to financial misconduct raises questions about how well the firm keeps its commitment to following international standards for preventing money laundering and keeping offshore companies out of the hands of criminal elements,” the ICIJ report said.

Stopping him is not working. So far their strategy has developed from “hoping for the best” to “waiting for something to turn up”.

The remaining candidates seem terrified of going head to head with Mr Trump.

Consider this. Of the $215 million spent by Super Pacs – the cash-guzzling, arm’s-length organisations that do the dirty work of a campaign – so far only $9.2 million has been spent on attacking Mr Trump, according to The New York Times. Peanuts.

And that’s for the thinnest skinned candidate in the race. A glance at his Twitter feed is evidence enough of how badly he takes criticism. A toddler would be embarrassed.

Jeb Bush, once a presumed shoo-in for the job, offered a clue. As scion to the ultimate Republican dynasty, he fell on his sword after another thumping in South Carolina, the better for the anti-Trump vote to coalesce around a single standard bearer.

This is now what passes for conventional wisdom: Mr Trump leads because of the split vote against him so who is the next body to be thrown in front of the Trump juggernaut?

The liberal John Kasich? He has made clear he is not dropping out. He is going to run until he pockets the vice presidential position on the winner’s ticket.

Ben Carson? His conservative supporters are most likely to go to Ted Cruz, the unliked Texas senator, with little prospect of lifting his numbers to anything close to the front-runner.

The only calculation that works at this stage is for Mr Cruz to fall in behind his fellow Cuban-American senator, Marco Rubio.

It makes a certain superficial sense: one titillates the conservative base while the other reassures the party establishment.

Think Reagan-Bush of 1980.

But surely the Republican elite have woken up to the smell of coffee by now… if not something less pleasant. It is not 1980.

If voters in angry America are rejecting the political elite by flocking to a charismatic reality TV star, it seems unlikely that they are going to buy a stitch-up worked out over sparkling water in the smoke-free rooms of Washington.

And there’s the Trump card problem. When Mr Trump promised not to be a sore loser and opt for a third-party campaign in the event of rejection in the Republican primaries, he did so on the proviso that he was treated fairly by the Grand Old Party.

A backroom deal would provide him ample opportunity to cry foul, freeing him to run as an independent. He might not win, but he could make damn sure the Republican candidate didn’t either.

All of which shows that radical steps are certainly needed. But banging heads together to stop Donald Trump is simply not going to cut it.

A bolder strategy is needed. It’s time for the Republican party to start to love the Donald, to groom him as their candidate, rein in his excesses and curb his profanities.

It is not as crazy as it sounds.

In fact it has started. Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is among the establishment figures who have begun quietly advising Mr Trump in something of a kitchen cabinet.

Much of his platform is up for grabs anyway. Cut through the bluster and he has left plenty languishing in the long grass. Foreign policy is to be decided by rooms of experts; economic policy will be subject to his own, much vaunted negotiation skills.